The Search for Reconciliation in E. L. Doctorow's City of God

2006 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Wilde
Keyword(s):  
Modern Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
City Of God ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Personal Story ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Crisis Of Faith ◽  
Role Of Religion

AbstractE. L. Doctorow's novel City of God is constructed around a crisis of faith experienced by an Episcopalian minister who eventually converts to Judaism. Within and around this personal story unfolds a fascinating array of moral and spiritual dilemmas which raise provocative questions about the role of religion in modern society and its relationship to secular ethical thought. It is argued here that the novel can be understood as an appeal for reconciliation in a number of different but related ways. The 'religious' characters strive to preserve the relevance of religion by emphasizing the pre-eminence of ethical commitments to love and justice and to the open interpretation of scriptural messages rather than to rigorous adherence to doctrine. The novel tests the possibilities of reconciliation to the limit by revisiting the Holocaust and touching on other horrors, but implicitly it conveys a faith in the oneness of humanity which may yet prevail through a renewal of ethical dialog.

The role of religion in modern society

nauka.me ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Zohidjon Sarimsokov
Keyword(s):  
Modern Society ◽  
Religious Values ◽  
World Community ◽  
The World ◽  
Correct Understanding ◽  
Role Of Religion

This article is devoted to the role of religion in modern society. The author reveals the main directions of religion in society, the problems associated with understanding religious dogmas and solving these problems. Special attention is paid to the problem of activization of ultra-radical groups based on religious grounds, the perception of the world community of religion and the problem of correct understanding of religion on the example of Islam. Based on the analysis, the main causes of the emergence of problems related to religion and its perception were identified. Using sources whose authors directly deal with the problems of religion throughout their life, the author gives some recommendations for eradicating the problems that arise from a misunderstanding of religious values.

Introduction: Religion and the Novel

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-33
Author(s):  
Christina Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Religion And Literature ◽  
Religious Other ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter introduces the topic of religion and literature, theorises the novel as a secular genre, and develops a concept of religion as the other in the Arabic novel. It begins with a discussion of the relationship between religion and literature, identifying imagination, metaphorical language and mythos as areas of overlap, before turning to the question of religion and the Arabic novel as a modern form which eschews faith and dogma but is nevertheless packed with religious themes, images, characters, language and intertextuality. This is accounted for by the form’s secularism, which is theorised in terms of Charles Taylor’s conditions of belief. Literary secularism is not static and stable however, thus religion emerges as the other in the Egyptian novel, with all the ambivalence which alterity characteristically entails. This religious other calls into question postcolonial studies’ over-valorisation of the East/West binary insofar as it has obscured the critical role of religion in Arab postcolonial literature and identity.

Religion, Reconciliation, and Modern Society: The Shifting Conclusions of Hegel'sLectures on the Philosophy of Religion

2013 ◽  
Vol 106 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-60
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
The Status ◽  
Religious Reasons ◽  
Role Of Religion

G. W. F. Hegel's greatest contributions regarding religion and politics stem from his abiding concern with social cohesion. While Hegel was interested in now classic questions regarding the role of religion in government, the focal point of his engagement with religion and politics lay in his view of religion's role in binding together a complex society in which a more traditional social order had been fragmented by interrelated economic, social, political, and intellectual transformations. He was less concerned with the role of religious reasons and language in policy debates or elections than with politics in a broader sense—specifically, the way that religion enables the population as a whole to identify with the society's defining social and political institutions, including the family, the economic order, and other legal institutions. In this image, religion reconciles the population with the existing practices and institutions. Without significant degrees of such identification and reconciliation, even the best of laws will be insufficient to sustain a polity. Though reconciliation is one of Hegel's principal terms for this relationship, it in no sense implies “making do,” settling for, or simply accepting the status quo because it happens to exist. Rather, he is ultimately concerned with religion's ability—or inability—to enable us to find ourselves at home in a just and rational social order that promotes freedom.

scholarly journals From Confusion to Conversion

Poetics Today ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-367
Author(s):  
Douglas Morrey
Keyword(s):  
Political Party ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Bad Faith ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
National Pride ◽  
Unreliable Narrator ◽  
Role Of Religion

Submission (2015), a novel in which a Muslim political party is elected to govern France, has been widely interpreted as part of a ubiquitous discourse of “declinism” in contemporary French intellectual culture. The novel has been accused of complicity with a reactionary politics favoring a return to strong patriarchal authority and national pride, while the narrative of the triumph of political Islam is frequently interpreted as a thinly veiled act of Islamophobia. This ideological interpretation is, however, complicated by the bad faith of the novel’s unreliable narrator, and by the ironic treatment of his narrative voice. By taking the elusiveness of this narration more fully into account, it becomes possible to read Submission as a tentative — if never unambiguous — narrative of religious conversion. To this extent, the treatment of Islam in Submission can be seen as consistent with the persistent but ambivalent role of religion in Houellebecq’s wider work.

scholarly journals The Building of Main Character’s Self-Actualization through Religion in Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-184
Author(s):  
Ellychristina D Hutubessy
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Data Analysis ◽  
Humanistic Psychology ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
Role Of Religion

The purpose of this study is to find out the role of religion in Siddhartha’s self-actualization process in Hesse’s Siddhartha. The analysis applies Rogers’ humanistic psychology focusing on self-actualization. The method used was qualitative with content analysis. The data were taken from the texts contained in the novel. Data analysis used triangulation techniques. The results showed that Buddhism and Hinduism had taught various things through religious activities conducted by Siddhartha to find out his actualization.

Maurice and Religion

2020 ◽  
pp. 154-174
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Fordoński
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
British Society ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Changing Role

This chapter explores the role and representation of religion in the text of Maurice and in critical readings of the novel. Concentrating primarily on the text itself, the chapter offers close readings of those parts of the novel where religion/religions play a part, stressing their importance in the structure of the novel. This analysis retraces the influence of religion (predominantly Christianity but also ancient Greek and pagan religious thought) on the main characters’ psychological development and behaviour, especially on the way they try to deal with irreconcilable demands of religion and their own psyche. The chapter thus reflects on Forster’s attitude towards religious institutions and the changing role religion played in early twentieth-century British society and among Edwardian writers. The chapter also considers the role of religion in the reception of the novel, both in scholarship and among twenty-first-century readers. The chapter concludes by considering questions of reception and the relevance of Maurice to twenty-first-century (queer) readers as concepts of homosexuality have undergone considerable changes in parts of the world.

scholarly journals Artistic image of a modern Japanese woman in the anime film “Paprika” directed by Satoshi Kon

2021 ◽  
pp. 46-57
Author(s):  
Vera Sergeevna Moiseenko
Keyword(s):  
Japanese Society ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Japanese Woman ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Western Influence ◽  
Female Image ◽  
The Status ◽  
Artistic Image

Cross-cultural communications prompted the international popularity of the Japanese original genre of anime. It has become the translator of not only the Japanese mentality and traditional values to the West, but also demonstrates the changes taking place in Japan. The analysis of artistic image of the anime heroine Atsuko Chiba (Paprika) is the goal of this research. Noticeable changes in the status of women in Japanese society are observed only since the middle of the XX century, which immediately found reflection in Japanese cinematography. The use of empirical and comparative methods allow establishing that the changes taking place in Japanese traditional society changes retain the national peculiarities. The anime film “Paprika” directed by Satoshi Kon, which is based on the eponymous novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui, reflects the transformation of the role of women in modern society. The novelty of this work lies the fact that this article analyzes the virtually unstudied topic of the artistic imagery in anime and the structure of modern female image therein. The images of Atsuko Chiba and Paprika, translated from the novel to anime, indicate the changes that took place in the Japanese society in the late XX – early XXI century, and namely the female image that gives a better perspective and sense of such changes. Despite the Western influence upon the traditional Japanese society and transition of the country into the new level of development, did not hinder the preservation of national peculiarities that are based on the century-old traditions and Japanese mentality.

Ferdinand Oyono's Flüchtige Spur Tundi Ondua and Germany's Cameroon

PMLA ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 128 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-148
Author(s):  
Volker Langbehn
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
German Empire ◽  
German Colonialism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
German Publisher ◽  
The Many

Almost anyone who reads ferdinand oyono's une vie de boy (1956) in any language will conclude that the novel focuses on French colonialism. But is it only about colonialism by the French? An analysis of the many German resonances throughout the text—as well as an engagement with the German translation of Une vie de boy—suggests that it is about much more. Oyono's Une vie de boy enables the reader to reflect on Europan colonialism more broadly beyond the role of France. The novel offers a lens onto Germany's colonial history because Cameroon was a former colonial “protectorate” of the German empire. This historical context, therefore, places Une vie de boy in both national and transnational contexts. While my reading addresses possible connections or similarities between French and German colonialism, the publication in German itself adds an important layer to the understanding of Une vie de boy in Germany. In consideration of the political activism of the novel's German publisher, Johann (Hans) Fladung (1898-1982), the publication of Oyono's novel can be read as a criticism of German historiography in the 1950s, which frequently avoided Germany's colonial history, a history that has been linked with the crimes of the Holocaust (Zimmerer).

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